On 16-17 May the National Library of Estonia had the pleasure of welcoming colleagues from the National Library of the Czech Republic for a joint workshop. The workshop, initiated by Director General Tomáš Foltýn, was held on the occasion of the official visit of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. The joint event of the two national libraries was opened by Honourable Jiří Drahoš, First Vice President of the Senate, and Merilin Piipuu, Undersecretary for Cultural Heritage of the Estonian Ministry of Culture. The workshop programme was multi-faceted, ranging from development strategies to digital activities – digitisation of historical and modern library collections, digitisation principles and data storage, web archiving, and much more. A topic of special interest to both libraries was cybersecurity. Margus Noormaa, Director General of Estonia’s Information System Authority, gave his expert view and pointed out the basic threats and aspects to follow in this area. The vulnerability of us all in the cyber world was illustrated by a real-life experience of a cyber attack, shared by the Czech colleagues.

Each of the six workshop sessions ended with a discussion on possible cooperation in the corresponding area. Delegations of both libraries, led by Director General Janne Andresoo from Estonia and Director General Tomáš Foltýn from the Czech Republic, acknowledged this event format as a very appropriate one – involving up to 10 specialists from both sides enabled to go beyond case studies and build in-depth discussion on mutually interesting topics in modern library world where innovation and cooperation are the key for further development. The handshake exchanged at the end of the workshop confirmed that contacts and joint undertakings will continue.